ASK & DISCUSS INDEX

5 years, 8 months ago - Marlom Tander

It's not themes that matter at this stage, it's function.

Build your site so that it functions the way you want. If that include sales, then with a sales plugin. THEN look at the themes and seek ones that don't seem to have any clashes with the other plugins you have already selected.

These themes SHOULD work, (if all your plugins are major ones widely used in WP).

If you really want hand holding, you should use those freelancer marketplace sites but choose someone local. Do meet them.

Hosting - Go Daddy does everything from shared up. If you will be streaming films and have issues, check with them that you have a sufficient space/power/bandwidth before assuming it's a site design issue.

5 years, 8 months ago - Steven Barwick

Hi George

As a web developer of 15+ years, I've found WordPress easy enough, a bit time consuming navigating around manually, but easy enough. And once up and running the websites need little maintenance, unless you include lots of interactive plugins.
The challenge with applying a theme is maintaining an aesthetically pleasing look with your own (film) content, so if you can find a theme that starts very much with the same colour mix, shades, fonts, as you want, then all the better.
It goes without saying that something with a responsive design works best, so it looks just as good on a mobile as a large monitor. And maybe consider a single page theme for simplicity.
GoDaddy manage some of my domain names, but I wouldn't use them for hosting the website too, as my clients demand speed. However, if you host the actual website with them too AND it loads fast enough AND you don't anticipate a surge of visitors, then by all means stick with them for the website hosting. In a nutshell, you want the site to load nice and quickly.
Depending on your budget, just google 'wordpress expert london' or whatever and find someone who has actual confirmed working wordpress themed websites that you can see and try. Or try a website like freelancers.net, where you specify your requirement (the more specific the better) and fee and freelancers can bid on it. As I said, the more you know exactly what you want, the better. So it really shouldn't be too much.

5 years, 8 months ago - George Brian Glennon

Thanks for these detailed replies. The site would be full-screen homepage then pages off of that for 2 trailers, cast, behind the scenes. (3 or 4 pages off the homepage)

It's a destination site not a sales site and not a blog. I'm not sure of the traffic demands needed.

Steven have you had or know of loading speed problems with Go Daddy?

5 years, 8 months ago - Zan Barberton

Hi - I disagree with the "build the site first then find a theme" approach, but happy to be corrected on this. In my experience different themes require different back-ends. For instant some portfolios arrange posts while others have portfolio entries which work differently. In particularly the way film is displayed varies hugely. Some portfolios don't display films very well so you need to figure this ahead. Many can't handle HD.

Themes that have worked for me: On demand is good, as is Brooklyn which we use for our current web site: www.boundarypictures.com. Not necessarily what you need for your purpose though. I used to be quite good with wordpress but the more professional the themes the trickier they are to "drive" - (a bit like picking up a Phantom when you're used to a 5D).
I can recommend a lovely web designer who is also very good with Wordpress. She is very good at her job and extremely reasonably priced. PM me if you are interested.

5 years, 8 months ago - Steven Barwick

George - only used GoDaddy for managing domains, not website hosting, so couldn't answer. If its included, you have to bear in mind that the website is probably running on a server with thousands of other sites. But if it loads swiftly and works, then thats fine. If not, moving the website content to another server and redirecting the servers is something that should take less than 24 hours and cost anything from free to something like £5 per month.

Zan, your website is very nice, clean, fresh. Agreed - having a designer who designs from scratch with the requirement in mind from the start is best, but as you say, if they use a template, to find a suitable theme and encompass it from the start, rather than as an after thought.

5 years, 8 months ago - Zan Barberton

Thanks George - I've been updating it! I did approach a few web designers about designing a site from scratch, but while I understand their prices were reasonable (similar to what I'd charge for a small film) if was completely beyond our cash flow. Hence the sort of half-half approach we did, where we chose a theme and worked with a designer to adapt it. This meant we were asking her for specific tasks rather than responsibility for the whole project. I'm not sure many web designers would have been as patient as ours was - we sort of lucked out there.

5 years, 8 months ago - Matt Mahmood-Ogston

Hi George, i've been producing websites for the last 20 years (as a coder, designer and also user experience consultant), and recently left that industry to follow my dream of making films...

If you're on a tight budget and have a little WordPress experience then i highly recommend heading over the ThemeForest to purchase one of their ready made "WordPress themes for film projects". You'll need to find the theme that is closest to your needs...upload to your WordPress installation, activate and then after a bit of tweaking you'll have something ready to support your film project at a tiny fraction of the price of hiring someone to build/design you a bespoke website.

Here's a selection of themes as a starting point:
https://themeforest.net/search/film%20wordpress%20theme

Then you'll need a good hosting company to host your website. There are lots of low cost, reliable hosting companies to choose from - TSOHost.com being one of them. I've never used GoDaddy for hosting so I can't comment on how good they are for a hosting a WordPress website. If you're in the UK, and your target market is the UK, ideally you should choose a UK-based hosting company.

For anyone reading this and finding the thought of doing anything in WordPress a little scary... as an alternative i'd recommend SquareSpace for a much simpler and quickly solution (albeit with less customisation options). Even though I can build my own websites, for my latest site I opted to use SquareSpace and was able to launch something fairly decent in a few hours.
(see: https://behindthefacade.com - it's not by any stretch an amazing website, but it hopefully shows you what you could produce in a few hours)

Good luck :-)

regards
Matt

5 years, 8 months ago - George Brian Glennon

Hi Matt, I've been over to ThemeForest and there are several stunning ones I could use. The only problem is that in the comments to every theme, you can see people have problems that need to be handled by a WP expert in order to sort them. Some of the designers on ThemeForest are answering queries in very poor broken english which is a red flag. So while I like the themes I am very leery to trust the roll out of my film to this. If you pick any great theme on there , and go into the comments you will see there are multiple problems with almost every theme on there, that require at least intermediate WP expertise, if not more.

If I did, I would have to hire someone in the business of WP to supervise the installation of any theme and to get it running without any issues and be on call if there is any problem. I plan to have this hosted on Go Daddy managed WordPress as they automatically back up daily and have security scans daily.

5 years, 8 months ago - Matt Mahmood-Ogston

Hi George, yes I understand the need for a properly supported theme!
The link I sent was for the selection themes designed specifically for film projects. But in fact you could use any theme and adapt it to your needs. The film related themes, on the whole, do appear less supported than the themes designed for multiple uses.

Uncode also looks very flexible. It's one of the top selling ( 60,459 Sales) , top rated themes (4.88 average rating)
https://themeforest.net/item/uncode-creative-multiuse-wordpress-theme/13373220
Demo site: https://undsgn.com/uncode/homepages/portfolio-video/

The Brooklyn theme that Zan suggested is a good one too.

Regarding developers, if you needed one, I've been very happily using Upwork for several years. You can hire developers based on their reputation, feedback from previous clients, and also where they are based.
https://www.upwork.com/search/profiles/?nbs=1&q=wordpress%20developer

Always bear in mind that WordPress sites will need more work and maintenance compared to using a web platform such as SquareSpace of WIX.

5 years, 8 months ago - George Brian Glennon

Thanks Matt.

5 years, 8 months ago - Marlom Tander

+1 for Upwork.

Used a few people from there, though Drupal rather than WP. (You DO NOT want Drupal!)

5 years, 8 months ago - Matt Mahmood-Ogston

Yes you definitely want to stay clear of Drupal! :-)

5 years, 8 months ago - Ian Bailey

I use Wordpress for my website. The new Gutenberg Blocks system in Wordpress 5 makes design easier, but you often need to customise the HTML and CSS. Probably the most popular WP theme in 2019 is Divi, as it comes with a built-in DIY page builder. Plus there's a range of child themes that add extra styling and features.

In terms of functionality, you can usually find a plug-in that adds the feature you need. But if you need something more specialised, you'll want someone who can develop a Custom Post Type or a plug-in.

I've not used GoDaddy, but I'm happy with SiteGround. When setting up hosting, make sure you have an SSL certificate installed and active. Even if you're not selling from your website, it can affect your Google ranking.

5 years, 8 months ago - Caroline Bottomley

Hi George
We use strikingly.com - we found out about it through some high-end designer friends & I can't praise them highly enough.
As easy, if not easier to use than wordpress.
Looks gorgeous - world class production companies have said they think our site looks better than theirs
And excellent, real time help.
Free and paid for options - free is fine

best
Caroline
ps never Dupal!!

5 years, 8 months ago - Caroline Bottomley

ps Ive been commissioning and now self-building commercial websites for 14 years (I'm neither a coder nor a designer). Strikingly is head and shoulders my best experience, and by far the cheapest

5 years, 8 months ago - Steven Barwick

Since your original post George, I've been looking at some of the better online site building services out there. Personally I'm interested in those that I can host for customers but then extend using their developer tools and API's. But many of them offer good looking websites ready to go for approximately £10 per month. The usual homework needs to be done to determine if it works for one's own purposes, but essentials for me would be:
* ease of use
* good responsive designs
* reasonable degree of speed
* SEO
* Export Feature (should one choose to leave but want to keep the design)

Obviously if a site is expected to have massive amounts of traffic, I would not recommend any of these unless they can be self hosted.

squarespace
weebly
duda
webflow
wix
strikingly (thanks Caroline)

https://www.websitetooltester.com/en/best-website-builder